


Nowhereland

by shreddedpatches



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Incest, M/M, Possessive Behavior
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:03:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4026148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shreddedpatches/pseuds/shreddedpatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard can't stand the stagnation of his life with Jim.  So he does the unthinkable: he gets up and leaves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Accident

Except for the faint bustle of evening traffic and the rush of the kitchen faucet, the flat was holding its breath.  Richard stood at his proper place—in the kitchen, letting his hands soak in the warm water and soap suds in the sink.  Every now and then, he would half-heartedly scrub at the charred remnants of sauce baked to the side of the pot.  He had burnt everything that night: the chicken baking in the oven had started to turn black; the marinara had sat on the burner for too long; the green beans were hardly recognizable.  Just another failure.  More than that—an accident.  He had been so concentrated on reading through his new script, so lost in his own mind that he had completely forgotten that he was preparing a meal until the smoke detector started sounding. 

The night was ruined.  It was meant to be a celebration—an anniversary, however small.  A break from the microwave meals they so frequently ate, given their busy schedules.  Instead, they ended up eating instant noodles, decisively hiding away in separate corners of the flat. 

Richard’s fault.  Always Richard’s fault.

The footsteps were muted by the carpet underfoot, but Richard still heard their approach.  He stilled himself, stifled any protests that threatened to break free.  Docile, complacent little Richard—could he ever say no to anyone?

“Hey, Rich.”  The words were soft, apologetic, accompanied by a gentle hand on the shoulder.  It was always ‘Rich’ with Mark.  Rarely Richard, never Richie.  Never _sweetheart_ or _honey_ or even _pet_. 

Just Rich. 

That was okay, Richard supposed.  Maybe not ideal, but it was good enough.

He could feel Mark’s breath on his neck, nervous.  Mark was terrible at articulating his feelings—terrible at articulating much of anything, really.  The hand on Richard’s shoulder was trembling slightly when Mark pressed forward with a “I’m sorry about…this.  I—”

“It wasn’t your fault.  I was the one who burnt the food.”  Richard covered up his irritation with a mask of exhaustion and apathy.  The truth was that he couldn’t handle listening to Mark stumble through an apology, no matter how heartfelt.   This just wasn’t how these kinds of things were supposed to go for him.

“But _I_ shouldn’t have yelled,” Mark protested, his voice finally growing assertive.  He embraced Richard from behind, his hands settling on the sharp protrusions of Richard’s hip bone.  “And I shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have let you eat alone.  And I’m sorry for that, Rich, really I am.”

“It’s really okay,” Richard said, shrugging the other man off and moving a few feet to the left to dry some of the dishes in the sink and put them away.  “I burnt the meal.  I deserved it.  It’s fine.”

Really, Richard thought, it wasn’t fine.  It wasn’t fine because they had been planning this meal for a week, and Richard had gone ahead and _reduced it to ash_ because of his godforsaken _carelessness_ , and all Mark had bothered to do was spit some profanities and sulk in his room for a while.  He hadn’t grabbed Richard by the throat and pushed him against the wall, hadn’t pulled out a dirty kitchen knife to add to the collection of scars hiding just below Richard’s waistband, hadn’t locked Richard away until he learned not to be so stupid.

It didn’t make sense.  Mark was so agreeable, so kind.  So forgiving of each and every one of Richard’s shortcomings. 

Richard hated it. 

“Well, _I_ don’t think it was okay,” Mark continued, ever so persistent.  He let his hands trail up and down the sides of Richard’s torso like he was trying to rub his sincerity into his lover’s impermeable skin.  Like he was trying to wash away the past that Richard never talked about, the one that made Richard think he deserved to be yelled at and ignored for something as small as a burnt meal.  “I was tired and stressed, but that doesn’t justify it or anything.  You don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

Richard let his head fall to one side, defeated.  There was no point in arguing with someone with a heart like Mark’s, because if Richard protested too loudly, too many times, it raised the question of why.  Why he insisted on rejecting kindness.  And that wasn’t a conversation Richard was interested in having.

“I mean it, Rich,” Mark murmured, pressing the words into Richard’s neck in between soft kisses.  “I mean it.”

“Okay,” Richard said.  The singular word was just about all he had.

Mark took the silence that crept back into the room as a victory, so he held Richard close and mouthed fervently at his neck.  “Come to bed with me,” he insisted.  “We can take care of the dishes in the morning.”

So Richard shrugged and abandoned his post at the sink and followed this too-kind creature into its bedroom, because he knew that in the end, he was not meant to say no.  Even so, his eyes were irresistibly drawn to the charred dishes in the sink—drawn because they held a secret, one he could never utter aloud. 

The disaster in the sink was no accident.  Richard had _let_ the meal burn, and he would never tell.

***

Eight months.

More than eight months, if he was being honest.  If he let himself acknowledge that he had been counting the days since he left. 

Living with Jim had never been easy.  Richard didn’t expect it to be, but he did expect it to be fulfilling.  He was at the point in his life where he could feel time breathing down his shirt, where he could feel the seconds sliding through his fingers like sand.  Things were winding down to some sort of end—slowly, slowly, much too fast. 

And maybe Jim didn’t know it (maybe Jim didn’t care), but there were things Richard _wanted_ out of life.  Before, he had always taken it for granted that Jim would give them to him.  That, once his network of death had grown large and powerful enough to satisfy, Jim would turn his attention inwards like the good brother he always promised he was and hand Richard what he needed.  But now Jim was busy conducting an empire that had grown far too large and disconnected, and when he bothered to turn inwards, it was with teeth.

It was a slow, creeping realization—that if Richard wanted something, he would have to venture out into the world and grab it with his own hands.  And it was not brought on by the way Jim would pin Richard against the wall and tear at him should he misbehave, nor was it brought on by the biting words that would crawl under Richard’s skin and stick there for days.  No, Richard had trained himself to deal with things like that from a young age.  Jim’s nails and teeth were the perfect compliments to his lips and fingertips; they grounded Richard, reminding him that Jim needed him, depended on him in his own sick way. 

(Richard knew that that shouldn’t make him happy—their mutual dependence on one another.  It did anyway.)

No, abuse he could take, and gladly, too.  It was the stagnation that was killing him from inside—those moments when he was left lying alone in tainted sheets, clutching Jim’s pillow to breathe in the scent of him because it was the only thing there to comfort him while the last of _his own brother’s semen_ dripped from his body, left alone because something ‘more important’ came up the way it always did.  Moments where it became clear that this was all that was in store for him.   

There would be no happy ending for them, because Jim was a killer with a dead smile and dying eyes, because they were brothers and they were fucking, because Richard had never said no.  There would never be a soft white wedding or a cozy home in the countryside filled with the sound of children playing in the yard.  Jim would never retire, never put the work away to play the role of the supportive partner, because he _couldn’t._ Didn’t have it in him. 

There was a time, once, when Richard could tell where Moriarty ended and his brother began, but those days were gone.  Had been for a while.  The work was consuming Jim, eating him alive, and if he cared, he didn’t give any indication.  And all that was left for Richard was to wait for Jim to come to him when the work was breaking him and take what he needed from him and then leave again.  A call boy, really.  God, he was his _brother._

They were going nowhere, and Richard was smart enough to know it.  He also knew that he couldn’t take it anymore.

It took longer than it should, deciding to leave his twin.  No matter what he did to him, Richard loved Jim with everything he had.  Life without him didn’t just seem impossible: it seemed empty, pointless.  But then Richard realized that life with Jim really wasn’t that different, with the way things were.  And with the sick dependency Jim had on him, maybe it would be better for them both if Richard left.  Maybe, without relying on Richard to remind him who he was, Jim would find himself again.  Maybe Richard would find himself, too.

He didn’t mention his intentions to Jim; he could only imagine the answers he would receive.  And so he waited, holding his breath, praying that things would change and that he could stay.  But they didn’t.  Of course they didn’t.  So one day, Richard climbed out of his brother’s bed and packed his bag and did what he thought was impossible, leaving the penthouse with no intention of returning.


	2. Mildew

With its faint cigarette-and-urine smell and its mildew constellations, the decrepit hotel room was least comfortable place Richard had taken up residence (however temporary) in ages, although that was no surprise, seeing as he had been sharing a bed with his brother since they were children.  The water was cold no matter how long he let it run, the television refused to turn on, and the thin bed sheets scratched at his skin—

He couldn’t have asked for anything better.  No, the room wasn’t the nicest, but it was so far removed from the world his brother had held him captive in for years.  Better yet, _Richard_ had decided that he would stay in this hotel for the night.  Not Jim.  Richard.  If that wasn’t extraordinary, he didn’t know what was.

Richard pulled the scratchy sheets closer to him and snuggled into them as he searched for inexpensive apartments on his laptop.  There was one he had had his eyes on for a few weeks, although he didn’t want to admit it—didn’t want to admit to himself that he had been planning on running away. 

It wasn’t that he had been _planning_ so much as…preparing.  Just in case.  It was half intention, half impulse, the final leaving.  The night before, Jim had noticed the sadness clinging to his brother, and he had gently held Richard’s face with his hands and asked what was wrong in that soft voice that always managed to make Richard feel loved again.  And Richard had told him.  “I feel…stuck, Jim.  Sometimes it’s hard to know if you care about me, with the work and everything, you know?  And I don’t know what to do.”

“Richie,” Jim murmured, “of _course_ I care about you.”  And he let Richard cling to him and cry while he whispered sweet promises and apologies that Richard now knew to be false, swearing that the next day, he would come home in the evening and put the work aside and make Richard feel so incredibly special.

So Richard had stayed home and waited.  The hours flowed together and the sun started to sink below the city and—finally—his phone chimed with a text alert. 

_Won’t be home until late.  Jim decided to attend to the second meeting after all.  Sorry.  SM_

Richard’s face went slack with shock.  The second meeting?  The one Jim had tossed aside with complaints of “boring” and “dull” just that morning?  That he had proclaimed undeserving of his presence?  _That_ meeting?

_Well, this isn’t really a surprise_ , Richard thought glumly, pocketing his phone once again and slumping against the couch.  It had been foolish to think that Jim might come through for him.

His phone chimed again.  Richard ignored it initially, instead electing to stare out the window and into the fading light before letting his eyes fall closed.  When he finally looked at the message ( _Jim says pasta is fine.  Leave ours in the fridge please.  Thanks Richard_ ), he found himself getting off the couch and heading to the bedroom to grab the duffle bag.  He was grabbing a few days’ worth of clothes and snatching whatever cash was left lying around the flat and hailing a cab before he had a moment to reconsider.

It never would have happened if Jim had been at the flat—Richard wouldn’t have had the strength to run away with him _right there_.  Then again, if Jim had actually been there with him that night, Richard wouldn’t be running away in the first place.

He couldn’t help but feel that it was childish, bolting from the flat while his brother wasn’t even there to say goodbye or to try and stop him.  But it couldn’t happen any other way: Jim would _never_ just let him go.  Richard could only imagine his reaction; if it was a bad day, Richard’s face would be painted in purple, and the pain wouldn’t secede for weeks.  (If it was an _exceptionally_ bad day, Richard wouldn’t expect to live and see another one.)  

Richard could handle Jim lashing out, though; he’d done it his whole life.  What he wouldn’t be able to handle would be if Jim pushed his anger aside and slipped on another mask, begging Richard to stay and kissing him with lies just as destructive as his fists.  Jim wasn’t about to change for him.  Richard understood that now.  But even while Richard was angered and disappointed and disillusioned, he still worshiped Jim, and he knew that all it would take to break his resolve would be for Jim to say those three words.  He would be on his knees again in an instant.

So he left while he had the chance.  Nothing would change for him unless he did.  He knew that.

(That didn’t mean he didn’t feel guilty—didn’t mean it wasn’t cleaving his heart in two.  He couldn’t risk thinking about that, though, so he focused on the beauty of the mold on the wall and tried to smile.)

He made it to the hotel and the hours still insisted on sliding by without the relief of sleep, so Richard huddled under the delightfully uncomfortable sheets and tried to plan his next steps.  It was a lot to think about—jumping head-first into proper adulthood was more than a little overwhelming.  Soon, it was well past midnight, and the exhaustion Richard felt had sunk into his bones, so he put his laptop away and did his best to fall asleep in the foreign room. 

The darkness felt bigger, the sheets rougher without the light of the laptop.  Richard could have sworn something else was breathing in the room with him, but maybe that was a symptom of sleeping in the same bed as his brother almost every night for the past thirty years—his brain was making up the sounds of another person to compensate for the absence.

The minutes dripped into one another and his eyes refused to shut.  Instead, they scanned the darkness as though they were expecting to see something if they simply tried hard enough.  Richard burrowed even deeper into the blanket, a defense mechanism to ward off the fear chilling his skin.

When the faint light first illuminated the decay-constellations on the ceiling, Richard’s tired brain didn’t understand what was going on.  Then, he did—it was light from his phone, signaling an incoming call.

Oh, God.

If the darkness had induced fear in him before, Richard was sure the terror induced by the faint light was going to be the death of him.  His heart started thumping loudly in his chest, the sound amplified by the eerie half-light of the room.  He hadn’t thought about the phone, hadn’t factored it in because he didn’t want to spend money on a new one, now that there would be little money going around.  Stupid— _so_ _stupid_. 

Maybe there was still time: maybe he could throw the thing out a window and run.  With shaking limbs, he reached out to the bed stand and grabbed his phone, wholly intending to reject the call and then smash the offending object with a hammer.

Instead, he picked pressed the ‘talk’ button.

Of course.

“Sweetie, where _are_ you?”  Jim’s voice was velvet with concern over the phone.  Richard could see his face in the darkness—eyebrows all scrunched in falsified caring, playing like he didn’t already know exactly where Richard was, and why. 

“Um,” Richard squeaked.  God, what was he supposed to _say?_

“Honey, are you okay?  Do we need to come get you?  I’m really worried.”

The false tenderness in Jim’s voice almost shattered Richard’s resolve.  He knew it was a lie, _knew_ it, but—but maybe he could just lean into that lie, let it absorb him until it became true.  He could surrender, beg for forgiveness, and Jim would come and pick him up from the rotting hotel and kiss him all the way home and punish him like he deserved and everything would make sense again.  It would be so easy.

He couldn’t.  Nothing would ever change if he did.

“I’m…I’m fine, Jim,” he finally managed.  “I’m in a hotel.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Jim said, and suddenly his whole demeanor changed.  “Goodness, Richie—I expected you to be a _teensy_ -bit upset with me, but I had no idea you were such a _whore_.”

“No, it’s, it’s not that—I’m the only one here, Jim,” Richard explained quickly.  There was something about the insinuation that reddened his cheeks, causing him to fill with shame that didn’t belong to him.  He would never betray his brother like that.  _Never_.

(Except, well, he was.)

Jim didn’t miss a beat, voice twisting even further into a sneer.  “Oh, he left already?  How much did he pay you?  Or— _ohhh_ , don’t tell me: _you_ were the client?”  He paused to laugh, the sound harsh through the phone.  “Richard, I had no _idea_ you could sink so low—”

“Jim,” Richard said, unable to conceal the panic in his voice.  He wasn’t a whore, wouldn’t use one, he _wasn’t_ , he _wouldn’t_ , he—  “Jim, I didn’t—”

“I know.”  The animation in Jim’s voice evaporated, leaving Richard with a soft coldness.  “Now tell me where you are.  Sebastian will come pick you up, and in time I will come to forgive you for this transgression.  If this happens again, I won’t be as merciful.  Do you understand, Richie?”

Richard hated that.  Hated the way his brother could turn the cherished childhood name into a sign of ownership, hated that Jim’s voice was cool and dispassionate like he didn’t even _care_ , hated most of all that Jim wasn’t bothering to even _listen to him_ —

“No.”

It was easily the most terrifying thing Richard had ever forced himself say.  “No,” he repeated, louder this time, the second word finally able to stand on its own.  Even when rebelling, Richard could not take the gentleness out of his voice.  There was nothing cruel about the word; he was simply negating what Jim was saying.  Simply informing his brother that it wasn’t going to happen.

“ _Excuse me_ —for a moment, I thought you said ‘no,’” Jim said, his voice jumping back into the flirtatious lilt he always used with people he owned.  “I know you’re smarter than that, Richie.”

“Jim…I’m not coming back home.”  Richard’s hand clenched the sheets of the bed like they were the only thing keeping him alive.  “I can’t do this anymore.  There are things that I need and I don’t think I’m going to get them if things stay the way they are.  I’m…I’m sorry.”

There was another laugh on the other end of the line.  “Richard, you can’t possibly be serious.  You’ve lived in my shadow your whole life; you’ll never make it without me.”

“That’s not true,” Richard said quietly.  “If everyone else can make a life for themselves, then I can, too.  I just…got a late start, that’s all.”

“Oh, Richie…”  Jim trailed off almost wistfully; when he spoke again, his words were built to rip.  “You really are an idiot.  Can’t you even see yourself?  You’re a housewife—only good for cooking and cleaning and fucking.  You’ll starve—”

“Jim—”

“—without my generosity.  That little acting career of yours?  How far do you honestly think that will get you?  You’ll never—”

“Jim, please stop—”

“ _Shut_   _up, Richard!_   You’ll never make it because you’re  _worthless_.  You’re  _nothing_  without me; I can do whatever I want to you—I can hit you, hurt you, leave you, fuck you,  _kill_  you if I want because you’re  _mine_ , you’re mine and you always will be and no matter how far you run, that will never change.” 

Jim inhaled, tucking the rage away for a later day.  When he spoke again, his voice was soft and kind even though his words weren’t, and it left Richard wondering whether or not the love in his brother’s voice was just another mask.

“Just surrender, Richard.  You can’t win.  Even if you don’t tell me where you are, I will find you and I will take you home, and I think we both know you don’t want it to happen like that.”

Richard was quiet for a moment, working to steady his breathing in the hopes that when he next spoke, Jim wouldn’t hear the tears in his voice.  “Jim…I can’t.  I’m sorry.”

Richard knew his brother—every overdramatic, overpossessive inch of him—and he knew there was only one way to convince Jim to let him go.  So he said the most dangerous words one could ever say to Jim Moriarty.

“Let’s play a game.”

“What?”

Richard could tell that he had surprised Jim, piqued his interest: the voice on the other end of the line was finally silent, listening.  He could hear his brother’s breathing, deliberately calm, and he took it as a cue to continue.  “I want to play a game with you, Jim.  I know you don’t believe that I can survive on my own, and you’re probably right—”

“I’m never wrong,” Jim interjected, his words hard.

“I know, I know.  You’re never wrong,” Richard said gently, feeling strangely like was comforting an overgrown child.  “But that just means you won’t lose, see?  So can I explain the game, maybe?”

Jim was silent again.  Unsure of what to do, Richard pressed on.

“The game is a test of willpower, where I try and live by myself for as long as I possibly can and we refrain from contacting each other.  The first person to text or call the other loses, um, loses points.  And if I come home, I lose the game, and then I have to stay with you forever and let you do whatever you want to me.  And if you try and come and find me, then you lose the game instead, and you have to let me make decisions for myself.  Do you…do you want to play?”

Silence.  Silence to rival the darkness, its slender fingers wrapping around Richard’s neck.  Then, after too many breaths: “Don’t expect me to just welcome you home when you come to me.”

“Jim,” Richard choked, not sure if he was supposed to say _sorry_ or _thank you_ or _wait_.  “Jim, I want you to know that I still love you—”

The robotic beeping was in his ears before the full sentence had a chance to spill from his mouth.  Richard sat like that for a while—just listening to the monotone sound, listening and letting the finality of it all sink into his skin. 

Even then, he could feel the coldness of being truly and undeniably alone for the first time in his life.  He did his best to ignore it, though, because it was what he had wanted (what he had thought he had wanted), so he sat his phone back down on the night stand and pulled the blankets up to his neck in an attempt to ward off the numbness in his fingers.

This was what he wanted, he thought.  What he wanted. 

This wasn’t what he had wanted at all.

***

“Don’t expect me to just welcome you home when you come to me,” Jim spat, pressing his thumb on the ‘end call’ button decisively.  He looked around the flat, absorbing the lifelessness of the room before running his hand over his face and sighing.  For a moment, Sebastian thought he looked tired.  Worn out.

And then the moment was gone.  Jim slid his phone back into his pocket in one fluid movement and turned and smirked.  “He won’t last a month,” he murmured, the words directed at no one in particular.  Sebastian knew better to argue, so he coughed and said nothing, waiting to be dismissed for the night.

Jim rolled his eyes.  “You can go now,” he drawled.  “I don’t need you.”  He punctuated the sentence by turning away from Sebastian, heading up to his office, or maybe his bedroom.  Either way, Sebastian knew he wasn’t welcome, so he made his way to his own room and did his best to ignore the sounds of something breaking as he drifted off to sleep.


End file.
